Turkey Warns Syria It May Use ‘Greater Force’
Osman Orsal/Reuters
A wounded Syrian man was
transferred to Turkey in a boat over the Orontes, a narrow river marking
the border with Syria and Turkey, on Wednesday.
News reports on Wednesday spoke of intensified fighting close to the
Turkish-Syrian border near the Syrian frontier settlement of Azamarin,
with mortar and machine-gun fire clearly audible from the Turkish side.
As fighting near the 550-mile border has unfolded over the past week,
several mortar bombs have landed on Turkish soil, prompting Turkish
gunners to return fire. It has not been clear whether the Syrian mortar
is deliberate or the result of inaccurate fire in clashes between
government forces and rebels seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.
“We responded, but if it continues we will respond with greater force,”
state television quoted the Turkish chief of staff, Gen. Necdet Ozel, as
saying, according to Reuters.
On Monday, Syrian Army gunners exchanged artillery blasts with their
Turkish counterparts across the frontier for the sixth consecutive day.
The exchange of fire has raised concerns that the conflict will ignite a
broader crisis in the region. On Tuesday, the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, emphasized that NATO, of which Turkey
is a member and which considers an attack on one member to be an attack
on all, had “all necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey
if necessary.”
But Mr. Rasmussen also made it clear that he had no desire to embroil NATO in the conflict.
The fighting has touched many of Syria’s neighbors with fighting
reported recently in villages near a border crossing to Lebanon in the
west while, in the east, Syrian authorities have lost control of some
border crossings to Iraq. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled
into Turkey and Jordan in particular as the revolt, which began in
March, 2011, has evolved into bloody sectarian warfare. Last month
several mortar shells launched from Syria landed in the Golan Heights near Israel’s
northern border. Skirmishes have been reported between Syrian troops
and Jordanians guarding their northern border, and Jordan is worried
that the porous frontier could become a conduit for Islamic militants
joining the anti-Assad struggle.
Renewed turmoil on the Turkish-Syrian border on Wednesday, with
civilians reported to be fleeing the fighting, came a day after a
jihadist insurgent group that Western intelligence officials have linked
to Al Qaeda
claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a multiple bombing by suicide
attackers who struck an intelligence compound on the outskirts of
Damascus overnight. It was the second major assault that the group has
claimed to have carried out against a government facility in a Syrian
urban center in about a week.
The group, Al Nusra Front for the People of the Levant, posted a
statement on the Internet with details of what it called a three-stage
attack on a compound run by a branch of the air force intelligence
service in Harasta, on the edge of Damascus. It released a video showing nighttime blasts that it said were set off by vehicles packed with explosives.
The number of casualties from the attack was not known, and the Syrian
state news media did not immediately report on it. On Oct. 3, the same
group posted a statement on a Web site affiliated with Al Qaeda that
claimed responsibility for explosions in the embattled northern city of
Aleppo that killed dozens of people in areas held by the government,
including an officers’ club.
The attacks have highlighted a worrisome theme in the Syrian conflict,
in which Sunni extremist groups like the Nusra Front, some of which are
suspected of having links to Al Qaeda, are claiming responsibility for
deadly attacks on government targets, including suicide bombings, with
increasing frequency. While the main opposition fighting force, the Free
Syrian Army, has denied any ties to such groups, their presence has
strengthened Mr. Assad’s argument that the nearly 19-month-old uprising
is being orchestrated by terrorists.
The Nusra Front gave details about the operation in the Damascus area,
like the name of the man who drove the car laden with what it said was
nine tons of explosives in the first stage of the operation. Twenty-five
minutes later, another man drove an ambulance laden with explosives to
the scene, to kill those remaining or coming to assist, the group said.
Shelling followed.
Fighting was also reported on Tuesday in other areas, including Aleppo, Syria’s
largest city, and Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria. The Local
Coordination Committees, an opposition group, said in its daily tally of
violence that at least 115 people had been killed and that in Maaret
al-Nouman, in Idlib Province, the Free Syrian Army had captured more
than 40 government troops and seized weapons. Casualty claims by
antagonists in the Syria conflict are often difficult to confirm because
of restrictions on independent news reporting there.
While most Syrian insurgents are members of the country’s Sunni
majority, many of them defectors from the military, much of the Alawite
minority, to which Mr. Assad belong, remains intensely loyal to him.
Nonetheless, recent signs of fracturing have surfaced in his Alawite
base, including unconfirmed reports of deadly clashes last weekend in
his ancestral home, Qardaha, a village in Latakia Province, which
borders Turkey.
In another possible signal of Alawite ambivalence about Mr. Assad’s
political leadership, opposition figures in Syria and in neighboring
Jordan said that as many as seven high-ranking Alawite military and
intelligence officers had defected in recent days, with some saying they
had entered Jordan.
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